Business Drivers Shifts Insurers to As-A-Service Billing

By Liza Smith, Senior Vice President, OneShield, Inc.

The insurance industry is undergoing a technology transformation that will change the way we envision and operate business today and in the future. Answering this call for business change are cloud-based As-A-Service (AAS) core system applications.

The business drivers for this seismic technology shift are rooted in the requirements for insurers to be more agile and responsive to customer needs while meeting the ongoing demands to increase productivity with greater efficiency. One business function that is ripe for this technology revolution among carriers is billing.

Four Drivers Affecting Legacy Billing Systems
Four of the most common issues vexing legacy insurance billing systems are:

Configurability: Customer-facing processes in legacy billing systems often are hard-coded. Modern cloud-based systems give carriers more control over configurability allowing business users to make changes on-the-fly.

Flexible One-Stop Accounting Features: For many insurers with legacy systems, AP and AR functions may not actually reside in the same application. Modern systems give insurers a complete and current view of cash movement, while also letting customers, distributors and partners use flexible payment methods (credit card, EFT, etc.), as well as self-service customer and business partner portals.

Where the Market is Moving
OneShield Software prides itself on staying ahead of the technology curve in the insurance industry by continually monitoring the business and technical landscape to ensure service offerings are meeting customers’ needs.

We observed smaller insurers readily embracing the cloud-based AAS business model as soon as it began maturing. Now, we see similar interest among larger enterprises. By 2025 it is estimated that 95% of IT spending will shift from in-house systems to the cloud and AASt. Fast-growing businesses now want to extend the customer experience, improve distribution, reduce operating expenses, and provide the ability to support new product development.

With a deep understanding of these drivers, we created OneShield Billing, a cloud based business processing platform that addresses critical business drivers and is industry-agnostic. That is, with the ability to not only service P&C insurers, but also others in the broader financial services space, such as our recent entry to the Life Market.

OneShield BAAS is meta-data driven with a single data model, built on a transaction engine, and has its own workflow and rules engine. It gives you the ability to self-configure system changes with our design tool, OneShield Designer which allows companies to have full control over their application.

The Business Challenge with Technology
Investments in new technologies need to be carefully considered. Ensuring your business can leverage both existing and new technology that reduces the overall total cost of ownership — not only today, but five to 10 or more years down the road is imperative.

This concept of “future proofing” your IT decisions, and the common technology pitfalls that align with transformation projects guided our product philosophy and how OneShield Software evolved. As the market demands a heightened focus on customer service, self-service and user experience, OneShield Software’s AAS billing solution is a low-risk and responsive alternative to traditional software transformation projects.

For more information on OneShield Software and our OneShield Billing As-A-Service solution, or to book a demo, visit OneShield.com.